{"id":6920,"date":"2023-01-16T13:14:39","date_gmt":"2023-01-16T13:14:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rakhesh.com\/?p=6920"},"modified":"2023-01-16T13:14:39","modified_gmt":"2023-01-16T13:14:39","slug":"til-export-csv-can-skip-columns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rakhesh.com\/powershell\/til-export-csv-can-skip-columns\/","title":{"rendered":"TIL: Export-Csv can skip columns"},"content":{"rendered":"

Was doing something like the following in one of my scripts:<\/p>\n

$outputObjArray | ForEach-Object{ [PSCustomobject]$_ } | Export-CSV -NoTypeInformation $reportFileName<\/pre>\n
This takes an array of hash tables and export them into a CSV. Unfortunately (and thankfully, coz I almost missed it!) some of the columns were missing in the CSV file. They appeared fine if I skipped the Export-Csv<\/code> and looked at the output on screen, but in the file columns were missing.<\/p>\n
Turns out this is because Export-Csv<\/code> goes with the “columns” defined by the first element in the array, so anything not in that element is skipped for all the others. See this SO post<\/a> for an explanation and some examples.<\/p>\n
One workaround is to create a list of attributes across all the elements and then do a Select-Object<\/code>.<\/p>\n
$attributesArray = [System.Collections.ArrayList]@()\r\n\r\nforeach (...) {\r\n  # do things; and also add the hash table column to the above array if not present\r\n  if ($attributesArray -notcontains \"$attribute\") { $attributesArray.Add(\"$attribute\") | Out-Null }\r\n  \r\n  # more stuff, including adding to the array\r\n}\r\n\r\n$outputObjArray | ForEach-Object{ [PSCustomobject]$_ } | Select-Object $attributesArray | Export-CSV -NoTypeInformation $reportFileName<\/pre>\n
One learns… :)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Was doing something like the following in one of my scripts: $outputObjArray | ForEach-Object{ [PSCustomobject]$_ } | Export-CSV -NoTypeInformation $reportFileName This takes an array of hash tables and export them into a CSV. Unfortunately (and thankfully, coz I almost missed it!) some of the columns were missing in the CSV file. They appeared fine if … Continue reading TIL: Export-Csv can skip columns<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rakhesh.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6920"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rakhesh.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rakhesh.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rakhesh.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rakhesh.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6920"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rakhesh.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6920\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6921,"href":"https:\/\/rakhesh.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6920\/revisions\/6921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rakhesh.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rakhesh.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rakhesh.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}